Facebook's Oversight Board has said it conducted vetting of the Yemeni activist Tawakkol Karman prior to her appointment as a member of its panel but the company refused to outline in detail the individual merits of her appointment.
Ms Karman is a sympathiser of the Muslim Brotherhood who played a prominent role in the country's Islah Party as it organised protests against the government of Ali Abdullah Saleh almost a decade ago.
Inclusion of the campaigner in the 20-member group, which has a $130 million budget to adjudicate on the content moderation decisions of the under-pressure social media network, was an outlier among the board of former politicians, lawyers, academics and ex-journalists.
Analysts have expressed concerns that someone with ties to an extremist organisation that is associated with the very content that Facebook is regularly requested to remove compromises the oversight project from the outset.
In a statement to The National, the Oversight Board said Ms Karman's appointment had undergone its standard scrutiny procedures. Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg established the board after US and international pressure to stem the tide of recruitment and propaganda across Facebook and its other platforms.
It said a shortlist of candidates had been chosen for familiarity with digital content, decision-making skills, ability to exercise independent judgement and reflect gender and geographic balance. Four co-chairs, including the former Danish prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, then carried out interviews with the prospective members.
"All Members underwent significant vetting, agreed to a code of conduct, and have a deeply held commitment to freedom of expression and human rights, including addressing questions relating to censorship," the statement said. "The code of conduct, which all Board Members must uphold when undertaking case deliberation, requires them to ensure impartiality and objectivity in their decisions."
"We can’t provide a comment on the specific appointment process for any one Board member."
Facebook said the board's decisions would be handed down by panels of five from the 20 members and that Ms Karman and the others would not be making individual rulings. "No single Board Member has a particular remit. No single Member of the Oversight Board was chosen to be a representative of any one country or specific community," it said. "No one Member holds unilateral power as an individual on the Oversight Board or can make content moderation decisions alone."
On her own Facebook account Ms Karman has written describing the Muslim Brotherhood as a "freedom-fighting movement" and accused the administration of Donald Trump of supporting terrorism in the region. After she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the Yemeni Coalition for Civil Society Organisations described Ms Karman as a "war-monger not a peace messenger".
The oversight announcement sparked a boycott of Facebook by users around the region and fuelled allegations of bias in selection among US-based commentators.
The Counter Extremism Project, which has been a leading voice on Facebook's systemic failure to remove harmful material and propaganda from its platform, has been sharply critical of the appointments. It said the composition of the board and its structures does not mark a departure from the "delay, deny and deflect" approach long taken by the company.
"Beyond the obvious issues of why did it take two years to form this Board, and can a Board of 40 part-time people really manage the scale and complexity of managing 2.3 billions users, I don't believe that this Oversight Board is addressing the core issue with Facebook," said Hany Farid, professor at the University of California Berkeley and a Senior Advisor to the Counter Extremism Project.
"The main issue is not one of free expression, and which posts should stay up and which posts should be taken down. The issue, rather, is one of algorithmic amplification - how Facebook uses algorithms to maximise engagement with micro-targeting, which in turn promotes the outrageous, conspiratorial, salacious, and blatant lies, whether they be in the form of posts, news, or paid advertising."
Zayed Sustainability Prize
Red flags
- Promises of high, fixed or 'guaranteed' returns.
- Unregulated structured products or complex investments often used to bypass traditional safeguards.
- Lack of clear information, vague language, no access to audited financials.
- Overseas companies targeting investors in other jurisdictions - this can make legal recovery difficult.
- Hard-selling tactics - creating urgency, offering 'exclusive' deals.
Courtesy: Carol Glynn, founder of Conscious Finance Coaching
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Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
Pharaoh's curse
British aristocrat Lord Carnarvon, who funded the expedition to find the Tutankhamun tomb, died in a Cairo hotel four months after the crypt was opened.
He had been in poor health for many years after a car crash, and a mosquito bite made worse by a shaving cut led to blood poisoning and pneumonia.
Reports at the time said Lord Carnarvon suffered from “pain as the inflammation affected the nasal passages and eyes”.
Decades later, scientists contended he had died of aspergillosis after inhaling spores of the fungus aspergillus in the tomb, which can lie dormant for months. The fact several others who entered were also found dead withiin a short time led to the myth of the curse.
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Mohammed bin Zayed Majlis
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Key findings of Jenkins report
- Founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al Banna, "accepted the political utility of violence"
- Views of key Muslim Brotherhood ideologue, Sayyid Qutb, have “consistently been understood” as permitting “the use of extreme violence in the pursuit of the perfect Islamic society” and “never been institutionally disowned” by the movement.
- Muslim Brotherhood at all levels has repeatedly defended Hamas attacks against Israel, including the use of suicide bombers and the killing of civilians.
- Laying out the report in the House of Commons, David Cameron told MPs: "The main findings of the review support the conclusion that membership of, association with, or influence by the Muslim Brotherhood should be considered as a possible indicator of extremism."
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Checks continue
A High Court judge issued an interim order on Friday suspending a decision by Agriculture Minister Edwin Poots to direct a stop to Brexit agri-food checks at Northern Ireland ports.
Mr Justice Colton said he was making the temporary direction until a judicial review of the minister's unilateral action this week to order a halt to port checks that are required under the Northern Ireland Protocol.
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The internal combustion engine is facing a watershed moment – major manufacturer Volvo is to stop producing petroleum-powered vehicles by 2021 and countries in Europe, including the UK, have vowed to ban their sale before 2040. The National takes a look at the story of one of the most successful technologies of the last 100 years and how it has impacted life in the UAE.
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